Well.
One of the survivors of the fire happened to be one seventy five seventy five Pacific Coast Highway. It is a nineteen twenties Mediterranean style home, imposing architecture it is said to have and it is the scene of our True Crime Tuesday.
The story is true, sounds true?
No, it sounds made up.
I don't know. Gary and Shannon present True Crime.
Now.
One seventy five seventy five pch has stood for almost one hundred years. It has lasted the test of time. Many stories come out of this property as well. Like I said, it's a Mediterranean style building, arches resembling gateways to a lost world. You've driven by it, but not everybody who was driven by it knows. The story of Thelmatod. Thelma Todd died mysteriously one cold night in nineteen thirty five in the foggy streets of castele Mayre above.
Is that how I say it? Trustell a mare.
At the time, it was one of the most widely covered stories in LA history. Her last night was haunted and it has confounded La for almost a century. It was December sixteenth, nineteen thirty five, and Thelmatod was twenty nine. She was leaving home for a party with her mother. She descended the stairs in her beautiful, glimmering blue evening gown,
blue heels, and mink coat draped around her shoulders. Her chocolate brown Lincoln convertible was parked in the streets of the restaurant, the sidewalk cafe there that was actually called the Velmouth Todd Sidewalk Cafe. It was her car, the Lincoln, in the garage of her lover and business partner, filmmaker Roland West.
He puts Thelma Todd.
And her mother into the car for the night, and he tells her to be back by two am, because remember they're going to a party. She was going to drop her mom off on sunset. On the way, she gives him a look, rolls her eyes and says, well, then I'll be back at two five.
Well, he says, just so you know, the door's going to be locked into Missy or something along those lines.
Uh.
This party. They had become business partners, by the way, when they opened a cafe on the ground floor of what a community center for a sort of a neighborhood
that never really took off. Over there. It was far enough away from the amenities of Hollywood and the burgeoning West Side of la that it never really gained the sort of notoriety that it would decades later after the heydays of Hollywood, after the Depression, etc. So nineteen thirty four they opened this Thelmatod's Sidewalk Cafe and hoping that it would draw people from Hollywood down around the corner of the Palisades and get them some tourism business. Among
other things. She was the hostess of the restaurant. She would welcome people with this warmth that they had seen her display as her career as an actress on screen, And for about a year and a half they actually said this was sort of a great description, a great example of what could happen post depression.
They say that this was an early vision of everything the Pacific Palisades would eventually represent. A glamorous and close knit community in Paradise.
Close knit because, among other things, Roland West's first wife, whom he was estranged from, still lived in his house. She stayed in a tower above the house, and he moved into the living quarters above the cafe so he could keep an eye in the business. But of course she Felma Todd moves into her own quarters, also on the second floor. Mm and while they weren't married, they were probably doing married things.
Now, who was Selma Todd Well, She had been a film star since nineteen twenty five, so for about ten years. After she left her career as a school teacher in Massachusetts, she signed with Paramount. She was known for her work in comedy. She would play the straight woman with the beauty. She was a foil. She was in Laurel and hearty things. She worked with the Marx Brothers and things like that. They say that she kind of embodied the emergency, emerging
kind of modern woman. That she played socialites, but socialites with an elegant knowingness and wit that they say would become the hallmark of people like Carol Lombard Gene Harlowe. They said that her beauty was as classical as the statue of Venus. She had become though America's ice cream blonde.
She was the epitome of new society.
So that's where she was when she was operating this sidewalk cafe with the lever Roland West, with the ex wife and the tower above.
So she.
Goes to the party December sixteenth, nineteen thirty five. Her chauffeur drives her to the Trocadero nightclub on sunset for this party thrown by a couple of high profile actors and their daughter, a seventeen year old daughter the future actor Ida Lupino. So she goes from table to table. She's a star, she's been in movies. She's saying hello to everybody. She sees her ex husband there, the chichio, the chichio, the.
Chichio, chichioh I think we learned.
Okay, he was an actor's agent. He was a full time mob guy turned playboy, been pretty cruel to her during their marriage, and when they divorced, that's when she went over and started hooking up with Roland West. Well, they said that a bunch of people said that they appeared to kind of have bitterness between them, Yeah, because it's their exes.
Well, and he had a date with him, and he shouldn't even have been invited to that party. Allegedly, some say that she just left, that Thelma Toad just left, but some did report the bitterness that you talk about.
That the daughter of the stars throwing the party.
Later testified that she and Uh and Thelma Toad had a private conversation in the loo, where Thelma Toad had been beside herself, very upset over the whole thing.
So she eventually goes back out to her car. It's about three in the morning. She slides into the backseat. Her chauffeur says that she is unusually quiet. They say they don't know how much champagne that she had. It would have been anybody's guess. So he offers. The chauffeur offers to drop her off at her house, and she asks to be let out just past where sunset meets pch again. This is nineteen thirty five. There's no street
lights out there. The only sound is the wind through the cypress trees, the waves crashing just a short time to just short distance south. It was a little after three p forty five. In her evening gown, she climbs up that flight of stairs through the mist towards the second floor of her restaurant. That was the last anybody saw her alive. Is that what it right?
Yeah, we're in the midst of our true crime Tuesday. It is the mystery of what happened to Thelma Todd where we left you. Thelma Todd was with filmmaker Roland West. They lived in the Pacific palis Side, the Palisades area. She was shacking up with him. His ex wife lived in a tower above. They ran thelmatod sidewalk cafe there, very popular little eatery there which they said would come to define the Pacific Palisades in terms of tight knit glamour.
And she left for a party December nineteen thirty five. She had her mother with her and she was going to drop her mom off on sunset, makes her way to the party, finds her ex husband is there with a date. She is upset, doesn't roll back into her car with the chauffeur till about three am. By all accounts, maybe some tipsy, some tipsiness, so anyway, she at the
time refused. The chauffeurs offered a drop her off at her doorstep and asked to be let out just past where Sunset meets pH No street lights are on the road in nineteen thirty five, only the sound of wind and the waves. This was a little after three forty five am. She was in her blue sparkling evening gown and she began the slow ascent up the flight of stairs to PCH from sunset through the mist towards the second floor of her restaurant. I shouldn't say from PCH up to the property.
That same blue evening gown is what she was wearing when she was found dead the next day behind the wheel of her Lincoln in the garage below the building.
She looked flawless. She looked as if she had fallen asleep. No violence had been done to her.
Now her death was ruled accident caused by carbon monoxide poison. The assumption was she got home, she's locked out, maybe, and then goes back into the stairs, up the stairs to try to find shelter in the unlocked garage, might have turned on the car to get warm. She's in the closed space. Carbon monoxide.
That sounds like Ockham's razor. Right, But this is Hollywood, so there has to be conspiracy theories and rumors, doesn't there?
Yes, there does.
Rumors quickly spread that the filmmaker guy was in a jealous rage and that he killed her, maybe in their apartment or even on his yacht, then took her to the car to make it look like an accident. Then there was the conspiracy theory that he, the filmmaker, and his ex wife conspired together and killed her. There was gossip that Thelma Todd was involved with a bad crowd through that previous marriage to the guy she saw that night.
He was connected to the mafia, and they said that it was the mob's revenge for her saying no when they wanted to open up gambling tables at the sidewalk cafe.
All of this comes to a head with this inquest where the director lover, his estranged former film star wife, the maid, the chauffeur, the ex husband with the gangster ties. Every single one of them takes turns testifying about her death. But the facts seemed to unravel when you looked at
him a little bit closer. Some small element would throw the investigation into shambles, like there were drops of blood on the running board outside of the car, the long climb from pch to the garage, the lack of any physical trauma on Thelma. There was testimony also from a friend of Thelma's who claimed that she'd received a phone call from her on Sunday at four pm, hours after she would have died and would have already been lifeless in that Lincoln in the.
Garage murder accident or suicide. The filmmaker, by the way that she was banging around with, tried to reopen Thelma Toad's sidewalk cafe just days after her body was found. Tourists, conspiracy theorists flooded the place. They stole souvenirs from the restaurant. They wanted to walk up those fateful stairs. They wanted to come to their own conclusions. See, we don't change that much, that much, folks, One hundred years later, we
do the same damn thing. Guests recalled the eeriness of being seated by the filmmaker himself while lover came back to me played on a duke box. Cafe closed after a few months. It never reopened to the public. Did you see the part there were?
At one point, Shelley Winters was taken by Howard Hughes to that cafe on a date that when there was no one else there.
Sounds about right for Howard Hughes. The odd fellow that he was.
Wearing is klean xboxes on his feet. Now, the flames from the Palisades fire came close to Castillo del Mar, the home, but they said that it is still standing, and the turquoise blue garage doors, which are still visible from outside what would have been the last place she was alive in that car still standing.
So what do you think it was? I think it was the carbon monoxide. I think that's probably the best. Yeah, you're right, it's Oukham's raised. The easiest, easiest explanation is probably she's in her party dress. She's already got a little attitude, telling the guy, well, i'll be him at two o five if you're going to lock the door too.
There's already a power struggle going on there. And she doesn't come home until three forty five, three forty five, and she's full of champagne, and why wouldn't you lock your door by three forty five am?
And you know she wants to stay warm, so she goes in the car.
Sometime when guys didn't give gals their house key?
Are you kidding?
I don't.
I don't even have a house key. And it's twenty twenty four safer that way for him,